Genesis 27:8 Commentary and Bible Study

Robert Candlish warns of the test of faith that the reader of the narrative faces. On the one hand, he may be tempted to excuse all faults in Rebekah and Jacob and to show the same partiality towards them that Rebekah shows to her own son. That would be harmful to us, as it would ‘run the risk of compromising God’s holy law and lowering our sense of truth and right’. But the opposite error is more likely for the unbelieving reader. Sympathy naturally goes out to the man who is cheated of what seems a just reward as the firstborn. It naturally turns against the younger brother who uses cunning and trickery to obtain what does not belong to him and takes advantage of the weakness of an aged father. The only right approach to the passage is to see this event in the light of prophecy. God was at work. He was reversing the natural order so as to make a choice not based on any natural gifts or privilege, but based on his sovereign will alone. ‘The older shall serve the younger’ (Genesis 25:23). ‘Jacob I have loved; But Esau I have hated’ (Malachi 1:2-3). The choice of grace is not a choice that we can account for by any human characteristic or natural gift. In this case it deliberately seems to work against all that is natural in order to teach us that God’s choice is not what our choice would be. Candlish draws the lesson from Rebekah’s scheming that the saints must consider in what light their conduct appears to the world of onlookers around them. They are not likely to make up for your shortcomings. Not only, he says, are the believer’s sins more offensive than the sins of those who do not make a professions of faith, but the sins of believers are those that the natural conscience more instinctively condemns. Rebekah sincerely believes, he says, that the oracle of God is about to be frustrated. She believes that she must act to prevent it and she cannot think of any other strategy than that of deception. There are very few who have such strong faith that they are ready in such a situation to stand back and wait on the Lord for the fulfilment of his will rather than interfere in a way that must involve them in some guilt. So, Abraham went in to Hagar; Rahab could not desist from lying to those searching for the spies; the midwives created a false reason why the Israelite boys were not drowned in the Nile.